Dave Boling: Gonzaga seemed like a certain lock, but Kentucky just kept coming during Saturday’s overtime win

SEATTLE – Okay, I’ll take the blame for this.

Put this loss on my record.

At halftime, when Gonzaga was eviscerating Kentucky, 50-34, at Climate Pledge Arena, I mentioned on social media that the Zags had won 175 straight games when they led at halftime by double digits.

That’s as close to a lock as you can get in sports, right? That’s 175-0 with a 10-point lead or better.

This wasn’t only going to be a Quad 1 win over the No. 4-ranked Wildcats, this was worth much more. Like maybe Quad 1 Platinum. Quad 1 Elite.

If all that early opinion shaping weren’t enough, I started speculating that if there is any afterlife cognition for legendary UK coach Adolph Rupp, he was not resting easily.

After all, the Baron of the Bluegrass won his second national championship here in Seattle, 1949.

After all those neophyte observations, by someone who should know better, the jinx was in. Zags were doomed. Outscored 56-39 in the final 25 minutes – overtime included.

This loss looked so much like their other loss, an overtime defeat to West Virginia in the Battle 4 Atlantis in the Bahamas. They seemed in control and withered under the late pressure.

This one was better from the Zag standpoint, although their halftime lead was more convincing.

They kept it close until the final seconds. In fact, they had a chance with 4 seconds remaining in overtime, but couldn’t control the ball.

Takeaways: The Zags showed their elite talent in the first half, and also their ability to snap out of cold streak just in time to push it into overtime. It was gutty, in a way, to pull out of such a steep nosedive.

Curiously, the Zags haven’t won in Seattle since 2019.

This game seemed to be such a terrific setup for GU.

Nearly 18,000 were on hand, with a good mix of Kentucky blue in the stands. It was loud, and witness to the ongoing atrocity that the NBA isn’t in here 41 nights every winter.

So, yes, once again, a pox on the houses of the Oklahoma carpetbaggers that stole the Sonics, and also on those betrayers that sold them the franchise in the first place.

Some curious performances, too. The Zags were third in the country in free-throw accuracy, netting 82.4 percent coming into the game. They were well below that, 17-for-24, against Kentucky, including going 8-for-14 in the last 25 minutes.

A couple of those were the front end of one-and-one situations, too.

Center Graham Ike again looked like an All-American for most of the game, with 28 points and 11 rebounds, but in the second half, he was 3-for-7 from the field and 3-for-6 from the line.

Point guard Ryan Nembhard came up with a big 3-point basket in overtime and scored 13 points with 10 assists and only one turnover.

Backup forward Ben Gregg brought great energy in the second half, scoring 14 points with seven rebounds.

The Zags keep up their challenging schedule, with Connecticut and UCLA on the road.

It’s likely their No. 7 ranking will slide, but if anything was learned from last season’s slow start, which ended up in the NCAA Sweet 16, is that some early losses aren’t lethal.

But when you start the season with a 38-point obliteration of No. 8-ranked Baylor, expectations are exceptionally high.

The two losses thus far, both in overtime, are not huge demerits at this point.

“Fewie is probably the best in the business,” Kentucky coach Mark Pope said of the work of GU coach Mark Few.

He said he told his team before the game that this one would have the feel of a Final Four game.

“It was a helluva basketball game,” Few said. “A lot of guys making heroic plays on both sides of the ball.

It was a helluva game. But a loss.